President Trump faced a great opportunity – though not one easily realized[1] – to appoint conservative judges for the over 100 vacancies that existed at the beginning of his term.[2] In addition, changes in the Senate confirmation process in the 2013 and 2017 made it significantly easier to confirm conservative judges to the federal courts.[3] Trump nominated conservative judges to court positions, and was more consistent than any modern president in nominating conservatives and originalists to the judiciary.[4] He had a very successful year in 2017 in nominating and confirming conservative federal judges.[5]

Contents

Supreme Court

Neil Gorsuch nomination

President Trump announcing his nomination of Gorsuch, January 31, 2017.

President Trump looks on as Gorsuch is sworn-in.

On January 31, 2017, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.[6][7] The nomination was well received by many conservatives.[8][9] Others, however, such as Andrew Schlafly, disagreed with the nomination due to concerns about Gorsuch's position on abortion.[10][11] The United States Senate ultimately confirmed Gorsuch by a vote of 54–45, even though the GOP was forced to initiate the nuclear option and lowering the vote threshold to overturn a filibuster for Supreme Court nominees due to Democrat obstructionism.[12] Gorsuch assumed office on April 10, 2017.[13] The appointment and confirmation of Gorsuch within Trump's first 100 days in office was considered a major achievement for Trump.[14] After assuming office, Gorsuch positioned himself as one of the most conservative justices,[15] and his presence on the Court was pivotal in achieving certain conservative legal victories.[16]

Brett Kavanaugh nomination

On June 27, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered a moderate and a swing vote, announced he would retire from the Supreme Court,[17] giving President Trump a unique opportunity to reshape the Supreme Court and give it the first reliable conservative majority since 1934.[18] On July 9, 2018, President Trump announced he had nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy.[19] Despite facing extremely strong opposition from liberals and Democrats, including unsubstantiated smears against him, the U.S. Senate confirmed Kavanaugh on October 6, 2018, by a vote of 50–48.[20] He was sworn in on the same day,[21] and President Trump ceremonially swore him in on October 8, 2018.[22] In confirming Kavanaugh, conservatives finally achieved a goal – of regaining a strict constructionist majority on the Court – that they had wanted since the 1960s.[23]

Notable Supreme Court cases

2017

Several Supreme Court cases in 2017 advanced conservative and originalist ideals. These cases included a ruling that a government ban on offensive trademarks was unconstitutional,[24] that states could not exclude churches from public aid for secular purposes[25] and affirmed that naturalized citizens could lose their citizenship if they gained it through lying.[26] The Court also denied cert (meaning it refused to hear the case) in Binderup v. Holder regarding gun rights for persons convicted of non-serious misdemeanors, meaning that the court's ruling that people convicted of non-serious misdemeanors would not lose their rights to bear weapons.[27]

The Court partially reinstated President Trump's travel ban pending hearings to be held in October.[28] Additionally, on July 19, 2017, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Trump Administration to strictly enforce its refugee admissions under the ban until an appeals court ruled on the matter.[29] On October 24, 2017, the Supreme Court dropped the case, due to it having expired and being moot.[30] In December 2017, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to fully enforce its third travel ban despite left-wing opposition.[31]

However, the Court made several decisions going against conservative ideals. The Court continued its expansion of the homosexual agenda by striking down an Arkansas law requiring biological parents to be named on birth certificates.[32] Additionally, the Court denied cert on a case on whether the Second Amendment applies to carrying guns outside the home, thus keeping in place a California law requiring a "good reason" to obtain a concealed carry permit.[33] Later in 2017, the Supreme Court refused to hear two cases involving assault weapons bans and open carry, keeping intact the lower courts' decisions favoring strict gun regulations.[34]

2018

The Supreme Court's 2017–18 term was widely described as a good one for conservatives.[35] Among 2018 Court decisions advancing conservative ideals, it ruled that immigrants to the U.S. can be detained indefinitely.[36] In April 2018, the Court overturned an Obama Administration effort to expand overtime pay laws to include certain car dealership employees.[37] In May 2018, the Court strengthened Tenth Amendment protections by striking down a law that prohibited states from enacting laws allowing sports gambling.[38] It also weakened the power of the administrative state by ruling that the Securities and Exchange Commission's hiring of administrative law judges violated the Appointments Clause.[39] Among labor rulings, the conservative majority of the Court narrowly ruled in favor of allowing businesses prevent class action lawsuits against them through their contracts, based on federal law.[40] It also ruled in a 5–4 decision that allowed states to remove inactive voters from its voter rolls in order to help prevent voter fraud.[41] The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in favor of President Trump's travel ban, a major victory for his administration.[42] In another major ruling, the Court overturned a 1977 precedent by striking down compulsory union dues for government workers.[43]

Regarding abortion, while the Supreme Court did not end the legal battle, it allowed an Arkansas law restricting abortions go into effect by refusing to hear the case.[44] The Court also threw out a lower court opinion that established a "right" to abortion for illegal immigrant minors since the case was moot, though it rejected the Trump Administration's request to punish the pro-abortion attorneys for misleading the court.[45] The Supreme Court also struck down a California law requiring pro-life pregnancy clinics to advertise abortion as an option for women.[46]

The Supreme Court made some mixed rulings. For example, on religious liberty, the Court ruled in favor of a Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple due to his religious convictions, though it did not rule on the general question of whether people of religious faith can be forced to take part in homosexual weddings against their conscience.[47] However, based on that ruling, the Court later threw out a lower court ruling against a Christian florist and sent it back to the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider.[48] Also, while the Court protected Fourth Amendment rights by ruling that the police need a warrant in order to search a vehicle on private property,[49] and ruled that the police need a warrant to search one's cellphone location records, the latter decision's reasoning was not consistent with the Constitution.[50] While the Court expanded states' rights and weakened the Negative Commerce Clause by ruling that states have the power to collect a sales tax on online retailers, some conservatives criticized the decision for allowing for more taxation power and the nagative effects that come with it.[51] The Supreme Court also killed several left-wing efforts challenging Republican-drawn legislative maps[52] – despite using narrow reasoning – in Wisconsin,[53] North Carolina,[54] and Texas.[55]

The Supreme Court, on a 5–4 vote with Justice Gorsuch casting the deciding vote, struck down a federal law making it easier for the government to deport criminal legal immigrants due to the law's vagueness, something that impeded the government's efforts even if the Court's reasoning abided by the Constitution.[56]

Number of judicial appointments

President Trump made major progress on nominating and confirming originalist and textualist judicial nominees in his first year in office.[57] It was reported in July 2017 that President Trump had nominated more judicial nominees by that point in his presidency than Obama and Bush II had done.[58][59] Additionally, while only five total Trump-nominated judges were confirmed by August 1, 2017, President Trump was still ahead of both former presidents.[60] By November 2017, Congress had appointed more judicial nominees than any other president since Richard Nixon at the same period of time into their presidencies.[61] In Trump's first year in office, the U.S. Senate confirmed the most appeals court judges ever in the first year of any president in American history.[62]

The U.S. Senate continued confirming a record number of judges in 2018.[63] In July 2018, President Trump broke the record for the most appeals court judges confirmed within his first two years when the Senate confirmed his 23rd nominee.[64]

Other achievements

On March 17, 2017, the Trump Administration notified the American Bar Association – which takes numerous left-wing positions and displays bias against conservatives – that it would end the ABA's role in evaluating judicial nominees before formally nominating them.[65]